A Virtual Reality Classroom Adventure
“Miss, there is sick everywhere!”
You hear a lot of strange things as a teacher. Some of it you often wish you hadn’t heard.
As I get older, a lot of what I hear in the classroom I no longer understand. Teachers make excellent dinner companions because we have such great stories to tell from the trenches of teaching. My first venture into virtual reality (VR) was no different.
We were lucky enough to have some Google reps come into the school that I was working at. They were to introduce some of the students and teachers to Google Expeditions and discuss using VR in the classroom.
Google Expeditions, (for those that don’t know), is an immersive learning and teaching tool that lets you go on VR trips or explore artificial reality (AR) objects.
On this particular day, I had my year 8 science class which had been selected to participate in the VR experience. As my class and I headed down the corridor to the classroom where we would have the VR session, we were all filled with intrigue. The kids were clearly excited and they could barely contain their excitement as they filed into the classroom. They took their seats and in front of each of them sat a set of Google Cardboard VR glasses.
Well, you can imagine how long it was before they started picking them up. This was like sticking a cake in front of a two-year-old and saying “don’t eat”. The children explored the glasses with gusto, putting them over their eyes and talking animatedly to their friends and peers about what might happen next.
I spoke briefly to the Google rep, who’s name I don’t remember but we will call him Ben, and within a few minutes, our adventure had begun.
The session was simple; we were going on a tour of the digestive system.
The students would start in the mouth and move as a piece of food would through the body. Ben would be the technician making sure the expedition went as planned, and I was the guide, walking the students through the digestive system and filling in all the relevant knowledge to match our curriculum as we went.
A perfect plan!
Straight away, AS SOON AS I PUT ON THE GLASSES, I was as engrossed as the kids.
I was transported into a 360-degree, 3D world. I spun around taking it all in and quickly becoming fully immersed.
Eventually, I remembered my role and started to narrate the journey. I decided to hold my glasses in my hand, allowing me to pop in and out of the experience and watch the students — it was amazing to see them so engaged. They were spinning on their chairs, looking up and down, talking animatedly and pointing into thin air.
They took to it straight away; they were naturals.
We watched the food pass from the mouth and down the esophagus.
Amazing!
As we move down into the stomach, I continued my narration; talking about stomach acid and digestion until suddenly I heard a voice from the back shout.
“Miss, there is sick everywhere!”
In a panic, I rushed to the back of the classroom where, Jack, the boy who had shouted the comment was seated. I was expecting to find a puddle of vomit on the floor as motion sickness is sometimes a problem with VR. However, there was nothing.
I looked up at Jack. He, and the rest of the class, were none-the-wiser as to my panic. They were all happily engaged and exploring. At this point, I was pretty confused as to what was going on. The comment from Jack, a lovable rogue, and the class clown was not uncharacteristic but he looked anything other than distracted or wanting to cause trouble.
“Jack?” I asked. “Where is the sick?”
Jack lifted his hand and pointed into the air in front of his face.
“There Miss,” he replied, “it’s everywhere. It’s like I am walking in it.”
Then it clicked in. He was talking about the contents of the virtual reality stomach. As I placed my own glasses over my eyes, his interpretation of the scene became clear. I turned back toward the front of the classroom to see Ben smiling broadly and my trainee teacher with her hand over her mouth trying not to laugh. I retreated slowing back to my spot in the classroom to re-group, smiling to myself. Only in this job, I thought.
The rest of the expedition ended up going to plan. Within 25 minutes we were done and back off to our own classroom. The students were noisier as we headed down the corridor.
They were all chatting about the experience while my trainee and I laughed about Jack’s comment and my Usain Bolt-like speed across the classroom.
When we returned to our science lab, the students were still chatting away.
We had a worksheet to do but I knew it was a fool’s errand getting them to do it. So, instead we discussed the experience in detail. Their hands were flying up at all my questions. The kids were bursting to share and have their say. If only teaching was always that easy.
By the end of the lesson, they were still just as excited as when we had started. They left with the worksheet as homework while chatting about their hour, ready to boast to their friends over lunch.
They wanted to know when they would get to do it again.
They wanted more.
The Sad Side of the Story
I have been teaching for 12 years and this is the only time I have seen VR in the classroom and I think this is massively disappointing.
The students are keen to have this kind of experience, and they gain so much from it.
Teachers are ready to learn new technology and skills and do whatever they need to do to help their students.
With money being one of the major barriers, where is the help?
Where are the investors, decision-makers and purse-string holders? Where are they? Don’t these people have children in school who could benefit from this type of experience?
We need to spread the word about the importance of technology like VR in our classrooms to the people with money to spend so they can help make it happen.
VR and AR are coming into our lives.
It is already on our phones, in our homes and on the big screen, and it needs to be in our schools, too. Our children need to use and understand this technology.
We only have one future, and that is our children.
